


The Thneedlery

by baniszew



Category: DR. SEUSS - Works, The Lorax - Dr. Seuss
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baniszew/pseuds/baniszew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The continued exploits of the Once-ler and company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Once-ler at Home

At the far end of town, where the grickle grass grows,  
The sun was setting, the sky blazing rose.  
As the moon was awoken,  
My heart was still broken.  
I opened a letter, which made it no better.

"Dear Once-ler," it read,  
"I hope you're not dead.  
I hear no one's seen you  
in an awful long while,  
but I just got this thneed,  
and it made me smile.  
It's a lovely light blue,  
and it's just what I need --  
A towel, a lampshade, a bike-seat, a skirt,  
a book-bag, a scarf, a snood, and a shirt!  
It came from this lovely local thrift store.  
But why, Once-ler, don't you make anymore?

Sincerely and true,  
Cindy Lou Who"

I set down the note  
Which that earnest girl wrote.  
The thneeds had been nice,  
but at such a sad price.  
I looked out the window  
to the hills down below.  
My spirit fell to the deepest of dumps  
as I peered at the old truffula stumps.  
I'd watched them for years with deepest regret,  
and what had I done to make amends yet?  
But a lonely old Once-ler can't bring back the dead.

"Maybe," I thought, "I should go clear my head.  
I'll take a trip, a trans-Pacific cruise!  
That's just what I need to fight off these blues."  
I made up my mind, my resolve and intent,  
And then I called up my travel agent.


	2. A Meeting

Way out in the sea, among the splish and the splash,  
The Lorax drifted amid a vast swath of trash.  
East, west, north, south, to the horizon,  
stretched a continent of junk, with plenty of flies on.  
Amongst all the morass of tin cans and boots,  
you'd of course never see the brown bar-ba-loots.  
Yet amidst empty milk jugs and bottles of rum,  
you could yet hear the humming fish hum,  
humming hums of sadness and thrumming thrums of trouble,  
thrashing about amongst ripple and bubble.  
Their fins tend to get stuck, the poor little things,  
inside those plastic soda can rings.  
The Lorax gave aid wherever he could,  
but mostly he clung to an old scrap of wood.

"I am the Lorax, I speak for the seas.  
I am the mouth giving voice to their pleas.  
Yet who's here to hear me, way out in the blue?  
If only a boat or a ship would come through."

And as it so happened on that fateful day,  
the old Once-ler's cruise ship was heading his way.  
Its course was set for Kona,  
then up to Kahului.  
From there the ship was gonna  
head north to Nawiliwili.  
She should be ending up  
in happy Honolulu.  
But just then there came a "Schluuup!"  
as she plowed into the trash goo.

"I say," said the Once-ler, "What is that stink?"  
He walked to the main deck and looked over the brink.  
He peered down at the piles of bottles and bags,  
the towers of tires, the rivers of rags.  
He looked and he retched and he looked away,  
and then he looked back and he saw something sway.  
A squat little man on a small scrap of wood  
scrabbled and teetered and tottered then stood.  
He was mustached and fuzzy, all white and brown.  
There on the trash it was he who was lifted, left town.

"I am the Lorax, I speak for the seas.  
I am the mouth giving voice to their pleas.  
Now lend me an ear,  
I've got something to say,  
The trash you see here  
has come a long way,  
from storm drains and dumps,  
from landfills and compactors,  
littered by chumps,  
from accountants to actors,  
from zoo keepers to zealots.  
Now it drifts here in chunks and in pellets.  
This trash heap you're smelling,  
spoiling your breakfast,  
is growing and swelling,  
it's bigger than Texas.  
And it's got a buddy  
a little ways off,  
just as big and as ruddy.  
Its fumes make you cough.  
And so you cruisers,  
I've got something to say:  
Are you losers or do-sers?  
Will you _do_ something this day?"

The first mate shouted, "Get out of our way!"

The engines were routed to reverse the ship.  
The Once-ler doubted he'd still enjoy his trip.  
He'd taken the voyage to escape and forget,  
But that old brown visage followed him yet.  
And then a thought hit him, blinding and bright.  
He had an idea how to set things right.

"Wait!" he called, with a furious yelp.  
The engines stalled. "I must give him my help."

The Once-ler leapt, he flew sailing.  
He went right over the starboard railing.  
Into that trash trove,  
the old Once-ler dove.  
He bobbed to the surface,  
while people watched, nervous.  
He lifted his head,  
and to the Lorax he said,

"I am the Once-ler, and I made the thneeds,  
But now I've an idea that _everyone_ needs."


	3. The Once-ler at Work

I paced about, preening and strutting.  
It was only two hours until ribbon cutting.  
... Now fifty nine minutes, plus one hour.  
The Lorax just stood there, expression dour.

"What's wrong old chap?" I said,  
As I gave a soft clap to his old furry head.  
"A bright new era is today beginning.  
You shouldn't frown, you should be grinning."

"I never thought a day would come,"  
Said the old Lorax, still quite glum,  
"That I would assist in building a factory.  
As tree-speakers go, I'm quite unsatisfactory."

"Nonsense!" said I. "Don't feel so low.  
We both had a point many years ago.  
Skies must be blue, and clean water must flow,  
yet business is business, and businesses grow.  
Look at what's happened, in a world without thneeds.  
People buy many more garments to meet all their needs.  
There are lots more factories both big and small,  
but our new establishment replaces them all --  
Duck farms filling pillows, cobblers cobbling cleats,  
farmers felling willows to plant flax fields to make sheets,  
companies crocheting curtains, knitters knitting napkins,  
shirt makers for certain, and milliners with their hat pins.  
But this factory here, you silly goose,  
makes a product specifically meant for reuse!

And its brilliant design is all thanks to you!  
This factory makes the world have _less_ trash goo.  
We built atop landfill, and who thanks us for that?  
The brown bar-ba-loots, from whom we took no habitat.  
We're powered by sunlight and wind, by natural gas  
That comes from the landfill's decomposing morass.  
And remember new chum, the best part of all,  
is that our raw materials come from that Pacific trash ball.  
We've planned well and we've fulfilled all of your wishes,  
and our thneed-making now cleans the home of the fishes.  
I am sorry, my friend, how we got such a bad start,  
but now can't we agree, that business can be smart?"

The Lorax gave a sigh, then he gave a slight smile.  
"I suppose I'll get used to it, in a little while.  
I must say I'm happy that some profits from these thneeds  
are going to the planting of truffula seeds.  
But we must not let success and profit's great appeals  
ever let us forget our earthly core ideals."

"Of course you're right, stout little friend.  
But look -- our wait is at an end.  
The words you speak have never been truer.  
But it's time to give the grand opening tour."

And then I saw a great crowd accrue,  
and right at the front stood Cindy Lou Who.  
Our grand opening day had very fine weather,  
And the Lorax and I cut the ribbon together.

In the grand entrance hall  
I addressed the great mob.  
"Now I'll tell you all  
about the first thneed process job.  
Out in the brine off the coast of Waikiki  
our fleet is at work making the seas squeaky  
clean with a wondrous boat I call the goo-gitcher-snatch.  
It's the greatest new thing for gobbling up trash.  
Twelve gitcher-snatch boats feed three gitcher-snatch ships,  
which bring junk to the shore on rotating shifts.  
While in the ship's hold, the gook starts to mold.  
By the time it hits shore, it's turned into a gruel,  
and the slime near the floor makes a great truck fuel.  
Fueled with gruel and filled with old swill,  
our trucks filled with junk drive over hill  
over dale and down valley  
then into this alley --"

Then I pointed through a great window pane  
to the row of trash trucks filling the lane.  
"But these loads of trash are the greatest of loot!  
Let's see what happens once they go down the chute."

The crowd trickled down in groups and in pairs,  
down to the basement, down the great stairs.

"And here," I said, "Is the filth-filter-foo.  
It filters trash solids out of the goo.  
The trash solids head up this big conveyor belt,  
with lamps overhead to make melty things melt.  
The chunks get dumped into my big-bit-blitzer.  
What does it do? It makes little bits, sir.  
It makes the big bits tiny and wee,  
and they rejoin the goo in device number three.  
Three is the boiler, it boils the mixture  
and squeezes it into this pasta-mold fixture.  
The boiling sanitizes, denatures, and cleans.  
It converts into oxides harmful alkenes.  
Then once we've got a uniformly thick paste,  
we squeeze it out with speed and with haste.  
As soon as it's ready it's turned into spaghetti.  
The strands are strewn down this ramp to this oven  
where they get nicely dried, then they get some more lovin'.

Now follow me into room number four,  
with the grand brushing-felting plush-belting floor.  
Here the dry strands are brushed out all thin  
As combs dart out, dart back, and dart in.  
On the mish-misher-mat they get all hammered flat.  
They're clipped, twisted, and twined into thin strands of felt,  
then brushed into softness as they head off on that belt.

The belt leads to the thneedlery, a place very secret,  
and no one may see by what pattern a thneed's knit.  
But you special guests just now may peer low  
down through these grates to see thneed ground zero.  
The finest knitting machines ever have I unfurled,  
the fastest contraptions to have knitted or purled.

And now friends let's come watch the packaging  
by this row of devices I call the pack-job-ring.  
Each thneed is folded, then tied with itself.  
Each thneed is tagged but needs no bag for the shelf.  
No fancy little carton, no display case,  
no wasted materials taking up space.  
Just one big box for each thneed shipment.  
We're trying real hard to keep things efficient.  
Then out to the stores in our goo fueled truck.  
Now let me show you what we'll do with our earned bucks.

The crowd walked out back, and out there to greet 'em  
was our brand shining new trufful-arboretum.  
Hundreds of saplings lined up in rows,  
All covered in thneeds to protect them from snows.  
"Now before you go home and enjoy the rest of this day,  
my co-founder the Lorax has something to say."

"Hello," said the Lorax, "It's been good to meet you,  
to come back and to be able to greet you.  
We've got a great factory, none could be keener.  
It doesn't pollute, it's a trash cleaner.  
The thneed's a clever thing: a towel, a washcloth, a dress.  
But none of this will mean anything, unless--  
Unless we all remember each day  
to cherish earth's worth in every way.  
Just this one factory isn't enough.  
We must change them all, though it'll be tough.  
The thneed's not enough, though it's great for clothes.  
We must change cars, toys, and how food grows.  
We need fewer whistles and bells.  
What we need is to change ourselves.  
We can't let sprawling towns get so out of hand.  
The bar-ba-loots need their wild land!

Yet today is not the day for such words of woe.  
It is a happy day, and I'll say before I go,  
that I'm proud our old Once-ler has learned  
that there's more to life than what we've earned.  
And I'm glad to say that he taught me a thing or two  
about how business isn't all bad, it depends what you do.  
But now I must travel, to places high and low.  
Thank you, Once-ler, for showing me that people do grow."

And with that he lifted himself up by his seat  
and vanished in the haze of the summer heat.  
The crowd's gaze followed him as away he flew.  
There was just one more thing I had to do.

From out of the crowd I called up a young fellow.  
He looked quite nervous, his face turning yellow.  
"Let's applaud this young man for his great deeds.  
It was he who planted the last truffula seeds.  
Not a tree in the trufful-arboretum would be here without his work  
to pot, sprout, and peat them, and never to shirk,  
to give them fresh water, feed them fresh air.  
Those last few seeds, he gave them great care.

And now my young friend, when these trees are full grown,  
I've got a new job for you, all for your own.  
You were the 'Unless,' and you've shown great vim and great nerve.  
And I'd like you to run a wildlife preserve.  
We'll replant them all among the old truffula stumps.  
We'll plant them in patches, copses, and clumps.  
We'll bring back the landscape to what it once was.  
As humming fish hum and bumble bees buzz,  
the swamy-swans can all come back to nest  
and the bar-ba-loots eat the fruit they like best."

The chap flashed a grin as he shook my hand  
and he looked out with hope across the land.  
He stepped to the microphone, the crowd to address,  
and he said these five words, "Remember. _You_ are the Unless."


End file.
